[WIP] Totem pole

Matthew Smith

Hello polycount!

I've been lurking for a while now and I've finally gotten to a point where I feel confident enough to post something. This is a totem pole I've been working on for the last couple of days and I was hoping for some feedback. I'm going to start texturing it soon but before I do I want to get my hi poly where I want it. Let me know what you think.

DWalker

Were you working from a specific reference? I'm just not getting the feel of a Northwest Indian carving. The owl wings are especially unusual, as is the board against which they are leaning. The bodies usually were carved from the entire trunk, not just the front half.

Matthew Smith

I used a few different references that I kind of cobbled together. I probably should have just taken a single totem pole and tried to recreate that but I really couldn't find one I liked. When I was researching it seams there are all manner of reasons for totem poles including telling stories/myths/legends. Sometimes they created them for artistic reasons. It seems any combination of animals/people can be put together to achieved that. So I figured why can't I create one of my own design? Here are some of the references I used for specific pieces:



I'm pretty new to this so any specific suggestions might help. Do you think I should make it all one piece? I think I used that back board to connect them all together but I guess that kind of seems lazy. Not sure what you mean about the wings though, could you elaborate?

Auldbenkenobi

The wings in your model are much larger than the body of the Owl whereas in the reference they're in proportion to the body. Try making the wings a tad smaller, or (which I think is the better option) increase the the size of the owl.

DWalker

The wings are usually out-stretched, but sometimes angled up or down; your reference is the first I've seen with curved wings. If you look at the reference, you can see that the space between the feathers is cut-out in the reference is raised on yours.

When working on projects, it's often safer to start with a single reference and then expand as you gain experience with the topic. Pulling from multiple sources for totem poles can be problematic for two reasons: 1) they are created by many different tribes, each with their own traditions of art and style, and 2) they are created to tell a specific story; mixing pieces means losing the story.

Matthew Smith

@ Auldbenkenobi: Yea I see that now. Shouldn't be much of an issue to make the body a little bigger.

@ DWalker: I understand what you mean with the art style. I tried to be consistent but maybe I need more experience in how to do that. Maybe I should have created my own story and then add the animals that fit into it? I dunno...

I would argue that mixing pieces is exactly what was done to create a story. Symbols were used to annotate a certain emotion or thought; in fact one symbol could have many separate meanings. Did you know that they had 'shame poles'? They put them on peoples land who couldn't pay their debts. That's like permanent shame, haha.

Is there anything that I might have done right here? I was thinking taking a piece or two and building from that. If not I'll try and start over. I appreciate the feedback.

Lucas Annunziata

You should probably pull the arms of the bottom animal in a bit. It would probably be hard to carve out such a large chunk of wood, and most of the limbs in your reference are held much closer to the body.

Matthew Smith

Okay so I decided to start over despite my every instinct to hold on to what I made. In the end it can only help me grow. I have a Maya blockout and I'm about to send it over to ZBrush. I just wanted to get the proportions correct before brushing. As you can see I took the concept of an entire thunderbird totem pole and decided to make that. I will try and continue to post my progress as I continue with this.

Matthew Smith

Update with my brand new totem pole! The HP is more or less finished but I would like to add a few details to give it some oomph. Also I deliberately didn't model that face sticking out of the whale body towards to bottom. Looked a little too creepy TBH. Let me know what you think.

Matthew Smith

I'm calling this more or less finished. I had a lot of issues with baking, texturing, and even rendering but I feel like I learned a ton that I can apply to my next piece. Anyway here are a few shots and a texture sheet for your viewing pleasure. Hopefully this is something I can put on my portfolio at some point. C&C still welcome especially if there are some glaring issues.

Stirls

What a creative and beautiful piece for your portfolio. Really nice work. Was this all textured by hand?

Matthew Smith

Thanks! I used Substance Painter for getting the base textures (mostly just wood) but all the scratches and bumps you see are done by hand.

Joltya

Looks cool! Very unique, but also an extremely viable part for environments. I like it a lot!

One thing that really annoys me is how much the wings look like cardboard. I just googled cardboard and found a lot of images that look exactly like those wings.



Also, what's up with the maps you're showing? I assume this is PBR, and I see an albedo/diffuse, a normal, and an AO, but I can't tell if the fourth one is a spec or gloss. Do you have a spec AND a gloss? Or just one? Honestly I wouldn't even bother showing the AO at all; considering it's something that's just generated automatically. Leave more room showing off the awesome maps that you actually put work into!

Matthew Smith

Haha yea the wings do kinda look like cardboard. I used a a wood plank texture and just had it repeat in y. I think I can play around with it and make it look more like the ref a bit more where it has little waviness to it. Or just get rid of it and use a detail normal, we'll see.

I used a metalness/roughness workflow for this. That last map is just a roughness map and I didn't use metal at all, except for that rod at the very bottom. I supposed I should have labeled them. I did use a curvature map to help generate some dust in places but that too was procedurally generated; I think I used an xNormals one and adjusted it in Photoshop.

Joltya

Ah I see. I didn't see the reference at first, but it does have the same waviness to it as your model.

I think you should get rid of the vertical grains you have on the gloss then. These make the wings look more like cardboard as it looks like that's where it folded (red). You probably want to get a tighter and more randomized grain on the horizontal wood texture as well (black). Maybe make the paint more opaque and/or redden the wood texture as well. The color of the wood you're using is very similar to cardboard and that's a big tell as well.



These are just my observations though, I'm not sure if anyone else is seeing what I'm seeing.

Cube Republic

yeah...you would be better using an alpha map/brush work to make the grain in zbrush.

Matthew Smith

Okay so I went a different route than I planned but this looked the best to me. I tried a couple different looks with the straight lines of bump/height but none of it turned out the way I wanted it to look. Instead I went with more of actual wood grain. Not consistent with the reference I know. But in the end it just looks better IMO: